Beakful | Becquée: is a space for poets, artists, writers, essayists, reviewers who don't necessarily want to get involved in a larger project, but want, from time to time, to place some of their work outside. Header: Jean-François Millet, La Bécquée, 1860. ISSN: 2647-5294

Sunday, 5 November 2017

Killing the Brown Snake by John Grey

Western Brown SnakeBy Andy (originally posted to Flickr as Western Brown)via Wikimedia Commons

It was a hot summer’s day
and my father killed a snake,
smashed its head
with a shovel,
as two foot of brown body slithered
this way and that
as it lost all connection to its brain.

I wanted to bury the reptile
but he tossed it
into the woods behind the house
where the ants could make a meal of it
as it decomposed in the searing weather.

I checked it out later
when the insects had already moved in,
got close up with venomous fangs,
a flattened forked tongue.

“If one of them bites you,” my father said,
“you’d get very sick.”
He didn’t mention death
but, even at the age of eight,
the implication didn’t escape me.

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